Donald Trump has launched a broadside against the UK’s green energy policies and claimed that mass migration has rendered Europe “unrecognisable”.
Speaking to reporters at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Mr Trump warned that "between immigration and energy – if they don’t change, bad things will happen to them".
During his address at the gathering, he specifically targeted Sir Keir Starmer’s stance on North Sea oil and gas.
Mr Trump, a vocal critic of what he labels the green energy "scam", contended that the UK Government has made it "impossible" for oil companies to develop North Sea reserves.
He said: “The United Kingdom produces just one-third of the total energy from all sources that it did in 1999 – think of that, one-third – and they’re sitting on top of the North Sea, one of the greatest reserves anywhere in the world, but they don’t use it, and that’s one reason why their energy has reached catastrophically low levels, with equally high prices.
“High prices, very low levels. Think of that – one-third and you’re sitting on top of the North Sea.
“They like to say, ‘Well, you know, that’s depleted’. It’s not depleted. It’s got 500 years. They haven’t even found the oil, the North Sea is incredible.
“They don’t let anybody drill, environmentally, they don’t let them drill. They make it impossible for the oil companies to go. They take 92 per cent of the revenues.
“So the oil companies say, ‘We can’t do it’.”
Environmental campaigners criticised Mr Trump’s comments.
Greenpeace UK’s Lily-Rose Ellis said, “Trump’s knowledge of North Sea oil and gas amounts to a tottering pile of lies” and “The UK Government can safely ignore advice from a climate denier bankrolled by the fossil fuel industry”.
Friends of the Earth’s Mike Childs said: “The only people who benefit from backtracking on climate action are the polluters, billionaires and powerful vested interests profiting from fossil fuels.”
In an occasionally rambling address, Mr Trump highlighted the achievements he claimed to have made in his first years in office since returning to the White House.
But he was scathing about Europe, deepening the transatlantic divides that have opened up over trade and his goal of taking over Greenland.
He told the audience in the Swiss Alps that countries in Europe were importing “entirely different populations from far away lands”.
He said: “Certain places in Europe are not even recognisable, frankly, anymore. They’re not recognisable.
“And we can argue about it, but there’s no argument: friends come back from different places – I don’t want to insult anybody – and say ‘I don’t recognise it’, and that’s not in a positive way, that’s in a very negative way.
“And I love Europe and I want to see Europe go good, but it’s not heading in the right direction.
“In recent decades, it became conventional wisdom in Washington and European capitals that the only way to grow a modern western economy was through ever-increasing government spending, unchecked mass migration and endless foreign imports.
“The consensus was that so-called dirty jobs and heavy industries should be sent elsewhere, that affordable energy should be replaced by the green new scam, and that countries could be propped up by importing new and entirely different populations from far away lands.”
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